Monday, 23 September 2019

Die for the Frog-Emperor

The Frogs of the Apocalypse, spawn of the Annihilator,
who is called 'Tan-Te' who’s form is unknowable, who’s colour is Viridian and
who is without Virtue

As the Nation Beasts descended from Heaven, or coalesced
from the ether of forgotten time, one great beast alone came not from above, or
from beyond, but from beneath; rising from the depths of the Chaos Sea.

This was Tan-Te, the Annihilator, Beast of the Abyss and
enemy of all civilised worlds,

All stories end in death, and the destruction of Esh, had
been long-prophesied; to fall to Tan-Te its awful spawn, the Krote. But the
slow, tenuous decay of reality has denied the destined end. The Annihilator has
been robbed.

TAN-TE

Though the form of Tan Te is unknowable, he seems to be
saurian, green and scaled, with sky-scraping spinal plates like shards of
broken glass. Long and powerful, moving with slow sinuosity, his brutal face
half-submerged, his golden eyes half-closed in slumbering but undimmed wrath.

Across hisback
range cold, towering forests. From his heart comes an irregular pulse of
bio-tectonic heat which turns the grey rain to steam as it lands and sends
endless curls of grey mist piling and rolling across the roaring rivers,
waterfalls, stagnant marshes and the terrible cities of the Krote.

THE KROTE – FUNDAMENTALLY EVIL?

The most warlike, destructive and feared of all the
Zoiterran peoples, the Krote weredevils of old Esh. Ghosts in the rain,
terrors in the mist.

Over time, direct experience has replaced this formless and overpowering
dread with a more reasoned, detailed, textured and understandable dislike. Most
Zoiterran cultures have warred against the Krote, most have also had cause to
ally with them at other times. While they are terrifying monsters, they also
hate Yggsrathaal and are dedicated to her destruction.

Over time, a slow trickle of independent escapees have
fled Tan-Te and found uncertain refuge in other nations. A fragile consensus
has arisen amongst the sages of Zoiterra; that the Krote themselves are capable
of Virtue.

The same cannot be said for their government, a deranged
and mysterious tyranny locked behind the endless mists of Tan-Te.

THE KROTE - FORM

The Krote are frog-shaped beings.

Like many Zoiterrans, they have a widevariation and many-sub-groups with slightly
different morphology. The standard Krote is about five feet high and tends to
be of a greenish colour, with smooth or only somewhat mottled skin. Beyond
this, there are many other types.

Some are very tall and wide, almost seven feet high, with
corrugated warty skin.Other forms are
smaller, more gracile and very light. These can be vibrantly colourful,
blazoned in bright contrasting colours.

It may not be that all Krote are inherently toxic, but it is assumed in Zoiterran culture that
they are literally 'made of poison' and toxic flesh, blood and skin strongly
assists a Krote in gaining status amongst its kind.

It is rumoured amongst the lower classes of Zoiterra that
all Krote are cannibals and that the only way for a Krote to advance is for
them to eat their superior, mimicking at a small scale what the Krote wish to
do to all life; to consume it.

This is true. They are predators and carnivores. They
will eat other intelligent species. They will eat their own kind. They wish to
eat everything. Krote raised far from Tan-Te, or those in the few forest tribes
beyond the reach of the Frog-Emperors rule, may not share this end-goal, but
they are few.

The greatest enemy of the Krote is dryness, and for once
Zoiterra is thankful for the Waste. A great sheet of parched, dry and alkali
land serves to contain them. They have a process of 'waxing' by which they can
make themselves resistant to dry conditions, various technologies to assist
them in travel and a handful of sub-groups who are naturally resistant to
dryness, but it is difficult for the Krote to move large forces beyond Tan-Te
for long

THE MIST-CITIES OF THE KROTE

Little is known of the cities of the Krote. Ambassadors andhandfuls of merchants or high-status individuals
have visited them and made reports. Only powerful, and suicidaly brave
magic-users will scry them; the Krote keepwatch for astral incursions, and respond withlethal force. One clan of the Vulture-Ptak of
Orxcea is permitted carry messages into, or out of Tan-Te. The content of their
messages is minimal

The cities are amphibious, built in or around freshwater.
Some are constructed in and around artificially extended and maintainedwaterfalls; tendrils of rushing water
descending branchlike paths over ziggurats of carved viridian scale, black
stone and petrified wood, cloaked in cloud and steam.

And loud. Rain plinks, pounds, steams and evaporates as
it lands. Water rushes, roars, trickles and drips. The Krote emerge as darkness
falls, they boom, croak, chirrup, cry and call in a great chorus of rolling and
consuming sound which echoes through the dank and endless gloom. Waste-Walkers
near Tan-Te hear the cities of the Krote as light dies away.

In and around these cities they farm giant insects as a
staple diet. Tales speak of gigantic maggots, organised termite hives, huge
worms and centipedes and the terrible conditions of a Krote insect plantation. They
mine Tan-Te himself, delving beneath his viridian scales to draw up droplets of
his burning blood, which they feed to their own young in terrible experiments.

THE TERRFYING CULTURE OF THE KROTE

The Krote live divided into castes and guilds, bound in
obsessivehierarchies beneath a being
known in Zoiterra as the 'Frog Emperor'.

These words would be considered a blasphemous insult to
most Krote. To them, the ruler of all
Krote is called "The King in Amber", "The Voice of Tan-Te"
or "The Mouth". All loyalist Krote live absolute and unquestioned
subjection to this mighty and sacred being who unifies the role of tyrant and
prophet

Many Zoiterran Sages believe the "Frog Emperor"
does not actually exist. The Qua in particular think they are a sacred prisoner
who has died and been replaced many times. Others speak of an undead spirit of
Psionic energy bound to a shrivelled mummy within an Amber sheath, or of
something like the skeleton of a frog, haunted by memories and eldritch power.
Only the highest members of each Caste and of the Toxic-Aristocracy are allowed
audience with The Voice of Tan-Te.

Beneath the King in Amber, the Krote are bound in a
culture of unending wrath. They rage, not to reclaim the worlds of Esh, but to
reclaim their destruction. They dream of the day they will once again battle
Gods and destroy all, before consuming everything. But that means they must
first, survive, and then kill Yggsrathaal.

Towards this goal they accept no moral limits and submit
to no philosophy except the doctrine of their own inevitable l victory and
consumption of reality. Tan-Te will meet, kill, and eat Yggsrathaal, and they
will eat Her children at His side.

THE KROTE MILITARY

The armies of the Frog-Emperor are rightly feared.
Shuffling troops in Verdigris-stained bronze, copper-armoured spearmen and
charioteers, Giant mindless war-tortoises, beetle-riding waxed Waste-Cavalry,
and monstrous creations who have drunk the Blood of Tan-Te, all preceded by
hordes of expendable monkeymen and orcs driven before their armies in drugged-up
waves of expendable chaff.

The military technology of the Krote has few equals. From
above loom 'air balloons' stitched from eel-skins. These deadly psychic
zeppelins house Praetorians of the King in Amber protected by gliding and
poison-skinned special forces. Below grind Geist Machines; Krote artillery,
sorcerous and alchemical contraptions sucking in a spewing out moaning spirts
which merge seamlessly into the choking mist which accompanies the horde.

The most loathsome aspect of fighting the Krote is their
deeply en-cultured belief in sacrifice. So deeply are most Krote brainwashed
into the cult of their own personal worthlessness that individuals, or whole
armies, will willingly sacrifice themselves if they think it will bring the
Krote as a whole one step closer to final victory.

An individual Krote might allow themselves to be impaled
in a sword or spear, then grab the blade, or haft, controlling the weapon at
the cost of their own flesh, while their compatriot uses the resulting gap to
go in for the kill. In sieges they will build a ramp of their own bodies to the
breach in a cities wall. This makes them utterly terrifying for most self-aware
beings to fight, it is like battling a horde of intelligent zombies.

SOCIETAL DIVISIONS

The family does not exist. The state has absolute control
of fertilisation, child-rearing and education. The Krote breed in vast numbers
of tadpoles, all of which are considered tools towards their eventual victory

Young are analysed and separated according to their
potential then raised in tight, unifiedhierarchies and absolute specialisations. Many Krote often do not even
learn of other classes and castes until they reach adulthood.

Someare sent to
the Toxic Aristocracy, those with psychic or magical potential are raised in
separate collages, split by even the school of magic they learn, some are
selected to receive the Blood of Tan-Te. Some are raised as researchers,
administrators and weapons-developers. A handful of those with potential are
raised as scouts, trackers and special-forces operatives. Others are
pre-emptively poisoned to limit their intelligence, making them more
serviceable workers or obedient soldiers.

It is from these 'altered' Krote that the Empire will
sometimes sell small populations. This highly-questionable trade, once more
common in darker and more threatened years for Zoiterra, has now fallen to a
trickle. The development of the Philosophy of Virtue has made the process more
and more problematic in the eyes of Zoiterrans, and the government of the King
in Amber has begun to worry that its methods for ensuring the sterility,
low-intelligence and, crucially, the absence of psychic potential from its
traded populations, may not be absolute.

PSIONIC POWER

This is exquisitely rare amongstZoiterran cultures, and little understood. Entire
generations can pass without any psion being born. There are no schools of
psionics in Zoiterra and what little knowledge there is, is handed down from
hard-sought, long-lived masters to individual students who may be lucky to find
them at all.

The Krote are more naturally psionic than other peoples
and their disturbing eugenics programmes have amplified this quality.Potential psions are carefully scanned for
and hunted out when young

Zoiterran intelligence groups, especially the Qua,
believe that the higher echelons of the Krote government are riddled with
psychic mindworms; subconscious commands, loyalty locks, multi-levelled
mind-labyrinths and memory-wipes crated to ensure total control. The Qua
postulate that even the ruling Krote live in a state of mild and continual
terror, never sure if their own memories or loyalties have been altered or
changed, and seeking always to exert the same invisible control over their
contemparies.

Those few Krote born with Psionic powers beyond Tan-Te,
or those who escape or defect, live in terror. The 'Voice of Tan-Te' is
obsessed with preventing the spread of psionic power. An independent,
non-loyal, psionic population of Krote living beyond its rule is nightmarish to
it. Any psionic Krote desiring freedom must live in total secrecy, or be
pursued tothe ends of Uud itself by the
forces of the King in Amber.

TAN-TE'S POSITION AMONG THE NATION BEASTS

The people of Zoiterra say that Tan Te is without any
virtue, while the Krote say his virtue is ANNIHILATION.

Tan-Te is a predator, and a continual danger to the other
Nation Beasts. They tolerate his presence because they have little choice in
the matter, none of them have the power to make him leave, and because, as
dangerous as Tan-Te is, he is a still-greater danger to Yggsrathaal

For the Annihilator despises the Great Entropic Wym above
all. She has stolen his fate, stolen his end and his meaning. And he is
absolutely focused on revenge. Tan-Te desires nothing so much as to destroy
Yggsrathaal, and to consume her. Once done, he will fulfil his purpose and end
what remains of reality, as he is fated to do. But to end the world, he must
first preserve it from Her.

Probably, they have propaganda needs and an, albeit small, intelligentsia. No doubt there is a Krote Leni Reisenthall and a Krote Speer. I imagine books of "How I Died Nobly For The Emperor And redeemed My Worthless Existance For Which I Am Thankfull"

Thank you. I wonder if somewhere in Zoiterra there is a high-browed academic that is publishing books on their art using way too many long words (as such books were done on real life propaganda authors).

The amphibious city suggests so many good images & game opportunities that I'm surprised I haven't seen it before. It's just hostile enough to be interesting, not so hostile as to be a headache. Good good stuff Patrick

In particular, maybe one of those city chases through a crowded bazaar and then the thief frog guy runs through a half-sunk building and the party has to deal with fully submerged rooms and things like that. Catch him before he slips into the waters of the Miscreants Cistern, beyond the grasp of mammals